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A Contrary View

From a young man who grew up in Klosterzimmern

Zamir is one of the many young adults who have grown up in the Twelve Tribes. In stark contrast to the “career-dropouts,” he is glad that he had this privilege. How he perceives the so-much-discussed education of his parents and his life in the community, he describes here:

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Translation

I was born in the south of France at the foot of the Pyrenees in Sus, Navarrenx.

I am 22 years old.

My parents passed on this faith to me and I also learned it in our school here.

For me it is important that I want to follow the God of my parents and that I made a covenant with Him and my parents, when I was 14 years old. We call it Bar Mitzvah. It is a freewill choice, that I made to follow my parents, and that’s why I also live in the community. And I don’t earn my own money, I don’t work into my own pocket, but everything I do should serve the whole.

We live like a beehive, where everyone does his part. Not everyone can do everything, but all together we can do it all. Because everyone gives all he has, and nobody keeps anything for himself. That’s the only way a community functions.

God created man, and he created him in His image. So the way we treat each other that’s how much we respect God. If we revere, respect the people around us, if we are helpful, and kind to each other, that is how we respect God.

In the community we learn to give what we can. We want everyone to come to their full potential, that means if only performance is expected, then some might do well, but others will stay behind. We want to strengthen each one in where he can do something well, and that everyone gives what he has.

There is a strong peer pressure especially in youth hood, where you want to be accepted by your peers. We are learning to go past that, to just be honest with our struggles, and just to be free.

Here we can be free to be the way we are.

You need God to be able to live in a community, and to have true relationships, because every man has that selfishness inside of them. Until now it never worked in any community. If you look in history, communities started but somewhere they always stopped, because you just can’t go beyond that point where you see one gives more another just lets himself be carried along.

That is the selfishness, it works in us too, but we can be saved. I experienced it in my own life, that I could confess my sins, my burdens, where I went against my conscience and I could be forgiven. When your forgiven you want to pass it on to others. If someone sins against you, you can’t hold it against them, because you yourself experienced that forgiveness, you can only forgive. Whoever is forgiven much loves much, said the Son of God.